


the comedy of man starts like this:

by thinkatory



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, Flashbacks, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Post-Canon, Richie Tozier's Stand Up Act, The Losers (IT), Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26267989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/pseuds/thinkatory
Summary: "I'm not crazy," Richie bitches into the phone."Look," Pete says, "if you'd rather go to rehab – ""The only addiction I have is porn, jackass," Richie says flatly."You rambled about clowns and dead kids, had a serious look of crazy-eyed and sweaty, punched me, ran off, got drunk, got yourjawnearly broken, punched a nursing something, then told everyone you'd go to a cave to die if you could," Pete says levelly. "If you've got a better explanation for that than drunk, high, or crazy, I'd love to hear it."Richie would like to think he's ready to get back to the real world right away. Richie is not. Richie is fucked the fuck up.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76





	the comedy of man starts like this:

**Author's Note:**

> A few points:  
> \- First fic for the fandom, be gentle.  
> \- I wrote this while exhausted in recovery from a surgery, so even after editing I'm still not sure about its quality. All my apologies if I've wasted your time with this piece. I'll do better next time.  
> \- Teen rating is purely for language.  
> \- Title from "Pure Comedy" by Father John Misty (great song).

"The doctor says," Richie says, gaze off onto the vaguest shade of the slope of the path up the aisle offstage, mic slung into position near his lips, "'bro, you have the biggest balls I've ever seen.'"

He takes the crowd by surprise with that one, which is always a nice fucking feeling. Sometimes, often, he feels like a hack, and maybe that wasn't even a good joke, but the difference between a good joke and a joke the crowd laughs at is negligible as fuck, if you can pretend that you meant a bad joke ironically.

Richie's big on irony. Irony puts distance. Irony makes someone think you've considered the situation and are so cool with it you can be kind of a dick about it. Irony is a pretty fucking solid defense in the court of social interaction. You might be a piece of shit human, but no one can deny you're funny, and if you're not a sex offender of some kind people will let you get away with a lot. As long as you're funny.

Out of nowhere he sees someone in the third row, pale in the shade of the stage lights, and his heart, his mouth both falter. He knows this is a fucking joke his brain is playing on him. He knows that everything is over, and anything he sees now is his own sick brain spitting out shit just to fuck with him.

Eddie can't be here. Eddie can't have been sitting all the way on the other side of the bar from him getting a drink two nights ago, Eddie can't have been on the subway reading a book about how to win friends and influence people or what the fuck ever, Eddie is dead as fucking fuck. Eddie can't be a shade in his kitchen, the scent of scrambled eggs on the air. Eddie is dead.

He realizes that the crowd's eyes and the camera's gaze are both still on him. Fuck. He looks up. "Hey," he says, and realizes in that moment that he both completely does not give a solid flying fuck and also that he cares too, too, too much at the same time. He scratches his face. "You and me, Newark, I think we're past this first date shit. Let's get deep, let's fuck."

It's not a pleasant feeling, and it doesn't help that something horrible is yanking him forward, like it's got his heart in hand and just keeps pulling him step by step into this viscerally awkward nightmare. Then _that_ image puts the image of It's heart in their hands, and Eddie dying or already dead twenty feet away, and he laughs, unbidden, before his mouth rambles and trips on. "Funniest shit I ever heard," he says, "was in my hometown. Fuck if you've heard of it, I'm the reason you've heard of it, how pathetic is that?" He waves that off. "Anyway, there's jack shit to say about Derry unless you like dead kids." His heart is pounding in his ears. "Their milk carton game was _solid_. Or is that too old a reference for you zoomers? Jesus."

The crowd is bizarrely quiet, not just quiet but _quiet_ quiet, and part of him is getting concerned. He's only just started, though, and he's terrified as his mouth keeps going. "So if you like dead kids, this is basically your Vegas. Or, sorry, let me make this a little more relatable to you – the Pokonos."

That gets a wry laugh, at least, from one person in the crowd, and it sounds a little more shocked than anything. He's still going. "Business advice," Richie goes on. "You wanna make money? Sell kids' coffins in Derry. Jack that price up, it's not like they have a choice."

There's a cough, two, in the crowd, but no one moves. No one seems able to move. They're all trapped in whatever is happening right along with him. Are they suffering like he is, are they hating him? "You think death is tragedy," he says. "I say it depends. Some deaths are so fucked up they go back to being comedy. Someone being chewed to death by a monster clown, that's, like, I want to be mad but that's actually a good fucking joke if you believe in God. I don't, but if you do, you have to admit that's a goddamn masterstroke, don't you think?"

He catches the eye of someone down in the crowd, and gestures to him, but as he speaks with a "Hey, kid," he realizes his mic's been cut off. He stops the twenty-something with a gesture and taps his mic, shakes it, pretends to caress it like a dick for a second, then makes a _Wait a sec_ gesture and walks to the edge of the stage when no one's bringing him a new one.

"They said come this way," the theatre PA whispers, and takes the mic from his hands. He almost bolts back to the stage, but a pair of hands pushes him one, two, enough steps forward from behind, and he's right in front of the dressing room within a minute or two.

He doesn't recognize the voice that says, "We need to talk, are you all right, bro?" but that might be because everything is kind of swimming in general, vision, hearing, the whole thing. He ignores it and pushes his way into the dressing room, only to be lightly pulled back.

"Don't fucking touch me," Richie bites off, and doesn't care about the response. He hauls off and punches whoever the fuck wherever their face might be, numb and half-blind with tears he's refusing to acknowledge, and stalks off before anyone can follow up on that.

He gets into a cab, where the real fucking awfulness threatens to strike him, and he swipes tears away in nothing short of panic.

"Shittiest bar in Newark," he demands. "Use your best goddamn judgment, just go, now."

They go.

* * *

Richie buys a bottle of tequila and pours himself four shots before he realizes it's not going to stop the crying. He slams his hand down on the table he's stolen in the back, and only then looks up, his eyes aching from the tears, to find someone recording him.

"Oh fuck off," he says, and fumbles to his feet, nearly tripping over the stool. He can't tell if the guy holding the camera is moving or if that's just his brain scrambling to keep up with actual physical movement that isn't sobbing ( _you pathetic piece of shit_ ), but he goes after him anyway. "This. This is what's fucked up about cameraphones. People like you can point that shit at me whenever you want and have everyone on the planet judge my ass when you do the exact same shit, do you know that? The exact same shit."

"I heard you had a mental breakdown on stage," the guy says, or maybe doesn't say, because reality isn't always telling him the truth right now. "That true?"

"I heard your wife wishes she could be railed by a big dick," Richie says, and relishes the punch he takes to the face on that one.

In the hospital, when they're checking to see if his jaw is broken, they take some blood. He complains, laughs at himself for complaining, calls the nurse a needle-dick. At some point after that he's still talking – it's what he does – but he couldn't tell you exactly what happened, or how, because it's all black space in his memory. All he knows is his knuckles are even more bruised than he would've expected when he finally 'comes to' in the soothingly-painted room, and no one seems overly keen to open the door to even find Richie fucking Tozier, professional asshole.

"Fuck," Richie says aloud from his spot on the bed, staring at the flowers painted inobtrusively on the wall in front of him. Then sense memory that never existed strikes him, and his gaze goes askance to the other side of the bed, and the absence of someone who would never have even laid there with him, even if it wasn't a mental hospital, someone who would have stared at him like he was a fucking faggot if he even tried – just the signifier of intimacy that a _bed_ is is setting him off, and none of this makes sense – he presses his face into his hands as hard as he can and bites lightly into his fingers to keep from crying.

No amount of _Jesus Christ, Richie_ thoughts shooting across his brain are helping. No amount of self-pity at this display is helping. He's pathetic, he's alone, and when it comes to this, _this_ , he'll always be alone.

* * *

"Do you have any plans of hurting yourself or others?" the nice lady who looks like a French bulldog asks. Richie grunts. "Mr. Tozier," she starts, unmoved. "I'm going to need you to – "

"Didn't I punch at least two people last night?" Richie swipes a hand over his face. "Does that count?"

"We're only talking about today," she assures him. "What do you think, today?"

"I think I'd rather die than eat Newark psych hospital food," he says, "does _that_ count?"

So far it's not going well.

He gets a call from his agent Pete. Apparently his agent is the one he punched. Apparently his agent isn't holding it against him, but is also 'concerned,' which leads nicely into the 'no one's letting you off the hook that easy, enjoy Newark psych' part of the conversation.

"I'm not crazy," Richie bitches into the phone.

"Look," Pete says, "if you'd rather go to rehab – "

"The only addiction I have is porn, jackass," Richie says flatly.

"You rambled about clowns and dead kids, had a serious look of crazy-eyed and sweaty, punched me, ran off, got drunk, got your _jaw_ nearly broken, punched a nursing something, then told everyone you'd go to a cave to die if you could," Pete says levelly. "If you've got a better explanation for that than drunk, high, or crazy, I'd love to hear it."

Richie's not sure he has an answer for that one. "I didn't mean to punch you," he starts, a minor peace offering.

"Yeah, that's not really the problem," Pete says without missing a beat. "Sit tight, kiddo. They'll figure out what to do with you before you know it. Maybe they'll be okay to transfer you somewhere upstate. Yeah? I got you."

"Yeah," Richie says, and stares at the gray formica in front of him as Pete hangs up on the other end. He puts the payphone back on the receiver.

 _"Jesus Christ," Eddie says, "are you touching that payphone with your_ bare hands _?"_

_"Yeah," Bill says, unbothered._

_"Do you know how many germs," Eddie says, revving up, "do you know that there are more germs on a payphone receiver than there are on a public toilet? And there's even more germs on every_ fucking _doorknob you touch – what I'm trying to say is everything is fucking disgusting but_ Bill _, use a tissue or something, for fuck's sake!"_

_"I don't have a tissue," Bill says with a shrug, and dials his house._

_"Jesus Christ," Richie says, "you're psychopathic, man. What he's supposed to do, ET phone home or some shit?"_

_Eddie scoffs, gaze tight on him for just an instant._

Richie's breath comes sharp into his lungs, and he makes himself go into his room. It's better than the main room, where he knows people recognize him. The last thing he wants is for people to have more Richie Tozier memories to toss around as anecdotes from their time in the nuthouse.

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes as he tries to focus. It's been six weeks since Derry. He hadn't been away long enough for his life to be destroyed, he knows that. There's nothing to rebuild because nothing was destroyed. Everything is fine and normal back here, and everything is fine and normal back in Derry, so why is he still a fucking mess?

_Seems like a you problem, Rich._

He makes an annoyed sound into his wrists, then looks up, still and thoughtful for just a moment.

"You're being a dumb piece of shit," he mutters to himself, and sits back on the bed, staring at his knees, ignoring the dumb grainy tread-socks on his feet. "It's 2017, you fucking moron."

This wouldn't be easy even if Eddie weren't dead.

"No," Richie says abruptly, before he can dig too deeply into this _by himself_ in a fucking _psych room_ in _Newark_. This is not the place for self-discovery.

"Richard Tozier," a nice woman's voice comes over the PA. "Please come to the front desk. Thank you."

He grimaces at _Richard_ , but pushes himself up. Maybe they'll feed him some sick-ass pills.

When he gets there, though, it's so much better than sick-ass pills. He ignores everyone there and rushes at Beverly, wrapping his arms around her without a second thought and holding onto her firmly. She's holding him just as tightly, and it's everything he can do not to break down completely.

"Can we go in his room and talk?" Beverly is saying softly to the woman at the desk.

"You can go into the main room."

Beverly takes his hand, holding his gaze, and leads him into the main room. There are windows outside looking on an enclosed lawn, a medium-sized TV in a cabinet bolted to the wall, and a group of shitty tables with shitty chairs. "Hey," Richie says, stupidly inspired, "it's like that Les Miserables song, except for psych wards. 'Shitty chairs at shitty tables.' No? Shit."

Beverly smiles, though, as they sit. "That song's about grief," she says. "About feeling like someone is missing."

His wry smile falters. "Bev."

She's doing her best to remain as reassuring as possible. "I heard about what happened."

"Yeah, I figured you didn't randomly come to fucking Newark," Richie starts.

"Richie." She's clearly not in the mood to watch him put off the conversation they need to have. "I heard what you were saying. On that video."

It hits him hard. "Fuck. Fuck, is there video?"

Bev closes her eyes. "A little."

" _A little_? What the fuck does that mean?" he demands.

"Shh." She's more firm than gentle. "You want me to be able to stay, right?"

"Yeah, sorry," Richie rattles off, "go on."

"It's maybe ten, fifteen seconds," she explains, hesitant. "And... we all wanted to come, but they said only one at a time."

"Tell the others to send me some scotch through the black market." He shakes his head. "No, fuck. Bev."

"It's Eddie," she whispers, and takes his hands gently from across the table. "Isn't it?"

He's not in the place to have this conversation, may never be in the place to have this conversation, but it looks like he's having it anyway, and his eyes are already starting to burn. "Bev," he murmurs. "Stop."

"I'm your friend," Bev says, gentle now. "Let me help you."

Richie flashes a faint, unhappy smile. "Do I seem like the kind of guy who accepts help?"

"I'm not…" She squeezes his hands. "I'm just here. For you. Whatever you need."

"I need to forget." The words are etched in his throat as he forces them out. "Bev, I can't."

"He's not gone," she says, soft.

Richie's retort is harsh, swift. "But he is." He shakes his head before she can answer. "He's dead, and his body is gone, and everything that was Eddie is gone, he's just gone, you can't pretend like there's, there's some – "

"It's easy to let bad memories capture you, Rich," Bev interjects, an edge to her tone. "It's more work to hold onto good memories and let them hold onto you."

"I've never been good at work," Richie mutters, vaguely unimpressed at the sentiment. "Or good memories. Or anything, really."

"It's okay." She tries to hold his gaze, though he's resisting looking at her. "It's okay... to grieve. Especially when we lost what we did the way we did."

"So, what, you want me to – " Shit, he's crying. He wipes a tear or two away. "You want me to sit around and think about good things, like that's going to change anything? When all of the good things are surrounded by bad things?"

"Yes," she says firmly. "That's exactly what I want you to do."

"It's some self-help book shit," Richie retorts, and now the tears are coming back up again. "It's, it's, what good are good memories going to do me when – " He manages to choke off the sentence before he can say _he's_ and anything more incriminating than that, but Bev disappears for a moment and reappears with a tissue box. He wipes his face, desperately embarrassed, and she seems to be waiting for him to go on. "Bev," he sniffs, "Bev, I love you, okay?"

"We all love you, too," Bev says, painfully gentle. "Eddie loved you, too."

Shit. He's crying again. He snatches up two more tissues and buries his face in them for some sense of dignity. She's by his side after a moment, her arms wrapped around him, and he tries to pull in steady breaths until he thinks he can hold himself together enough.

"Bev?" he whispers.

"Yeah, Rich?" she murmurs.

He says it, barely audible, about the only way he can probably manage it. "I'm gay."

He can sense Bev's smile even without looking at her. "Good."

"What the hell does that mean?" he asks after a beat, unable to help being a little offended.

"It means I had my suspicions, dipshit," she says fondly. "But I'm glad you told me."

"Yeah, well, weakened state and all that." He doesn't hesitate to ramble on, threatened, throwing up a wall of words. "Looks like Newark psych ward food is my kryptonite, I don't fucking know."

"I love you so much," Bev says, and her smile is sad and sweet and loving, and Richie just buries his face into her shoulder so he doesn't cry some more.

Hopefully this isn't how it goes with Mike, he'd fucking kill himself.

* * *

(He cries, at least a little bit, with everyone, a little less each time. Everyone hugs him. It's so fucking stupid, but he loves them all.)

* * *

"You're not alone," McAuley says, and Richie raises his eyebrows at the wall of his therapist's office, not _as_ soothingly painted as the psych ward's rooms, more green than blue. "Lots of people grow up in conservative areas, internalize conservative views."

"I don't do politics, Doc," Richie points out.

"I'm referring to homophobia," McAuley says patiently, and she watches him as he gestures. "What?"

"Yeah, I know," he says. "People called me faggot and queer all the time in Derry, they beat the shit out of gay people even now, it's a shitty place except for my friends, what's the point?"

"The point is that you're here, now," McAuley returns, "in a world that, for the most part, is far more accepting of what you are than Derry was or is."

Richie's quiet for a moment. "Yeah, but it's not my brand, is it?"

"So you have to change to be more like your brand, and your brand can't change to be more like you?"

Well, when you put it that way. He scratches his head. "It'll be a whole fucking thing."

"I imagine you have to choose what 'whole fucking thing' you want in your life," McAuley says easily, "because one is going to pop up whether you like it or not. What are your options, as you see them?"

"I see." Richie pauses. "I see keeping this shit to myself."

"That's one."

"And... telling people."

"That's two," she agrees. "What's the worst that can happen with either?"

"I hate myself." Richie hesitates. "Actually, I kind of hate myself with both."

McAuley's vaguely smiling. "What do you think is going to bring you the best future? Forget about the present, or the near-present, or the past. What lines up the best future for you?"

"Well, I won't get called a fucking faggot on Twitter if I don't come out, so that's fine," Richie says instinctively, and cringes. "Jesus. I know what you're fucking saying."

"I'm not pushing you," McAuley assures him. "You have to wait to do this until you're ready. And if you can live with it, if you're never ready, that's fine."

Richie exhales. "I hear you." He meets her gaze. "I do, I hear you, Doc."

McAuley pauses. "You have fifteen minutes left," she says, easy but professional. "What do you want to spend it on?"

He yanks on the cuff of his hoodie and pulls on a loose string. "Eddie," he says finally. "I want to talk about Eddie."

* * *

Coming out isn't terrible. It's not great, but it's not terrible. Overall he's pretty sure he'd do it again; more people have been incredibly supportive than incredibly dickish, but the nasty DMs and tweets have piled up and he hates them so, so much, he hates himself, and he slams his phone down (lightly enough) on the arm of the couch. Bill and Mike look over at him instantly and away from the game on the screen, and Richie grimaces.

"What?" Bill asks. "W-what, what happened?"

"Nothing," Richie says instantly.

"Bullshit," Mike says. "Let me see the phone."

Richie resists, trying to push Mike's hand away from the phone. "No – "

"Come on, man," Mike says calmly, and extricates the phone from Richie's hand. He looks into Richie's mentions, then DMs, quiet, then looks over at Bill. "You want to go troll some people?"

"I d-don't know much about trolling," Bill admits.

"Bet Ben can catch you up on it once he and Bev get here," Mike says, almost cheery.

"Please, do not troll Twitter for me," Richie says, flattered but also despairing.

"It's the least a Loser can do." Mike nudges him, and tosses his phone back to him.

Richie manages not to sniff, though he catches Bill's eye and a fond smile. For once, he can fill in what Eddie might say if he sat across the room, and it doesn't hurt so much he wishes he was dead. And that, he has to figure, is progress.

"Heckle the hecklers, that's what you're supposed to do, goddammit," Richie says, and takes up his phone.

"W-will your agent be cool with that?" Bill asks, plainly amused.

"Don't care," Richie says blithely, and starts to tweet.


End file.
